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Jerusalem posted:I wouldn't try to slip the audios into order, just watch the original series and then listen to the audios afterwards. They're produced to take place between certain televised storied but they were produced long after the classic series had finished, and it's pretty clear that they're being written with the "whole story" already of these various characters already known. Yeah, this is true. You can pick up the Eighth Doctor stuff, but wait until you've finished watching a particular Doctor's TV run before picking up their audio stories otherwise.
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Dec 5, 2014 04:11
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Having a listen to The Day of The Doctor/The Time of The Doctor soundtrack on youtube. Yes, I know we all generally dislike Murray Goooooollllldddd, but I honestly think his music is great. It's just often badly utilised. Pleased to hear the Ninth Doctor's theme, even if he doesn't turn up. Still retains the 2005 series sense of melancholy and mystery. Keeps his arc intact, despite what we find out in 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOG9IoRX3Us&t=81s
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Dec 5, 2014 04:20
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I don't dislike Murray Gold. He has one setting: bombastic, big emotion! That setting works for most of New Who, though. The Eleventh Doctor's theme gets stuck in your head and they did play it a bit too often, but that isn't his fault.
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Dec 5, 2014 04:24
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Bicyclops posted:I don't dislike Murray Gold. He has one setting: bombastic, big emotion! That setting works for most of New Who, though. The Eleventh Doctor's theme gets stuck in your head and they did play it a bit too often, but that isn't his fault. I'd argue that that's something that happened in his latter career, though. When he was confined to a couple of keyboards and the occasional vocalist, he was perfectly capable of being fairly subtle. The Doctor's Theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyIP5nrJ8gY Madame De Pompadour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1sadZktyos There's a lot of other stuff that now, in 2014, sounds cheesy as gently caress. The latter of the two I just linked is close, if not over the edge. But I still think he fell into bombast in the same way that RTD fell into overt camp. But gently caress it, I do love Smith and Capaldi's big themes, so maybe I'm just a whore for leitmotifs.
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Dec 5, 2014 04:31
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Murray Gold's whole 'bombastic' thing was a lot less after Rusty left, so I have a feeling a fair bit of that was Rusty poking him with a stick and shouting BIGGER! BIGGER! I really liked what he's done during Moffat's run, though he's a bit repetitive and overly reliant on leitmotifs.
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Dec 5, 2014 04:45
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MikeJF posted:Murray Gold's whole 'bombastic' thing was a lot less after Rusty left, so I have a feeling a fair bit of that was Rusty poking him with a stick and shouting BIGGER! BIGGER! I really liked what he's done during Moffat's run, though he's a bit repetitive and overly reliant on leitmotifs. I don't know, I think the catchy and lovably Matt Smith theme is his most bombastic. It's good, they just overused it a little. Talking about it will now make it stuck in my head, and I will be humming it all night.
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Dec 5, 2014 06:19
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True, I suppose; I was thinking more about how he'd go totally overboard for random-of-the-week stuff.
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Dec 5, 2014 08:34
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Burkion posted:God DAMNIT with all of the Dalek as statue jokes, I just want to make a silly joke about "A Dalek statue trying to kill people? It'll never happen" I'm not sure what you're referring to. The only thing I can think of is the Zygons in Day of the Doctor, but that's not Daleks. Something in Asylum maybe?
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Dec 5, 2014 10:33
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Jsor posted:I'm not sure what you're referring to. The only thing I can think of is the Zygons in Day of the Doctor, but that's not Daleks. Something in Asylum maybe? The Big Bang.
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Dec 5, 2014 10:35
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Yeah, the universe never existed and all other species but those on Earth (protected as best it can manage by the TARDIS) simply never were. The Daleks react to this in their typical stubborn fashion by simply turning to stone instead of winking out of reality.
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Dec 5, 2014 11:38
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Jerusalem posted:Yeah, the universe never existed and all other species but those on Earth (protected as best it can manage by the TARDIS) simply never were. The Daleks react to this in their typical stubborn fashion by simply turning to stone instead of winking out of reality. So what you're saying is the Cybermen didn't survive?
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Dec 5, 2014 11:42
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CobiWann posted:So what you're saying is the Cybermen didn't survive? The new series Cybermen couldn't survive a strong wind, so, no.
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Dec 5, 2014 11:50
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CobiWann posted:So what you're saying is the Cybermen didn't survive? They muzzzt be dezzzzztroyyyyed.
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Dec 5, 2014 12:49
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PriorMarcus posted:The new series Cybermen couldn't survive a strong wind, so, no. I find it hard to decide how strong a Cyberman 'should' be, honestly. I'm not sure why that is, but while most other enemies of the Doctor are pretty self-evident and consistent, it just feels a tiny bit weird for the Cybermen to be at ANY level of direct power. Maybe the most fitting would be for the Cybermen to be fairly easy to stop, but tenacious. Yes, you can shoot one and he'll keel over, but he won't be down for long. Hell, maybe even being down doesn't stop him, he'll just pull himself along the ground on the exact same goddamn warpath.
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Dec 5, 2014 13:17
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Cleretic posted:Maybe the most fitting would be for the Cybermen to be fairly easy to stop, but tenacious. Yes, you can shoot one and he'll keel over, but he won't be down for long. Hell, maybe even being down doesn't stop him, he'll just pull himself along the ground on the exact same goddamn warpath. Like robot zombies. Which I guess they are anyway. e: no 'sort of' about it
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Dec 5, 2014 13:50
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The old Doctor Who RPG I used to play in had a neat Cybermen adventure where our TARDIS (three of us played, I was one of the companions this time out) landed on a colony planet where the colonists (about 400 of them) ran a geo-thermal energy plant to power their complex. There was a group of Cybermen on the planet as well, having crashed there a few years earlier. With their conversion equipment damaged in the crash, they could physical convert people into new Cybermen, but any mental or technical knowledge would be lost during the process. This bunch of Cybermen were more concerned about survival through “balance” than “assimilation” because they needed the power and supplies the colony generated to keep themselves going. Too many Cybermen, however, and their wouldn’t be enough colonists to provide the necessary resources, meaning the Cybermen would die out. Too many colonists, however, and they would overpower the Cybermen, meaning the Cybermen would die out. If the colonists up and left, no one would be running the plant, which meant the Cybermen would die out. So there was a balance of terror for years. If a Cyberman “died,” the Cybermen would stomp in kidnap one of the colonists for conversion. If a colonist hit the age of 18, one of the older colonists would be killed to ensure the numbers stayed the same. It was really tense and drove home the central concept of the Telos Cybermen. The adventure ended when our “Doctor” convinced the Cybermen the plant was going to explode, and helped jury rig their old ship to leave the planet and place them in suspended animation until they could find a new home. Of course, the Doctor changed the coordinates at the last minute to send the Cybership deep into the heart of empty space. “Doctor, how did you convince them the plant was going to explode?” “Well, there’s the problem…it IS going to explode. I had to make absolutely sure they were going to buy that they would be wiped out.” “Wait, it’s going to actually explode?!?” “Not immediately. We have plenty of time to get back and fix it. My companion here is an expert on electrical engineering.” “No, Doctor, that was civil engineering.” “Oh, yes. Well, time to learn!” God, I miss that game.
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Dec 5, 2014 14:06
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CobiWann posted:The old Doctor Who RPG I used to play in... There was a conversation about the nature of a Doctor Who RPG in here a while a ago. (Or was it in trad games? Or an episode of Role-Playing Public Radio? Somewhere.) The general consensus was that it's very difficult to game something structured like the show, focusing on and main protagonist and their sidekicks, and that it was better to just have something set in that universe but structured in a more egalitarian way. How did you guys pull off the power balance? Did players take turns being the Doctor or was it just one of those perfect group/GM collaborations where everyone is okay with their roles? Sounds like your GM saw the Doctor Who universe in the same mindset as Big Finish. I could see that idea working as an audio... better than a lot of them, in fact.
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Dec 5, 2014 14:28
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My GM (my wife’s ex-husband, actually) would do “seasons,” where each player would take turns playing the “Doctor,” who was another renegade Time Lord, and the other two would be companions. So we’d have two or three “serials” where we’d play an “episode” a week for two-to-four-weeks, then we’d take a break for a bit, then come back with a new “Doctor” and a new “season.” We were all the same Time Lord, but we wouldn’t have a regeneration scene or anything. It was like watching Five for a month, then Eight, then Ten, and then going back to Five. We each got two “seasons” spread out over four-to-five years. It was a three-person game. We’d all been playing together for years (we had a TEN YEAR DC Universe game and a SIX YEAR “Firefly/Serenity” game with three other people and the same GM, and my wife runs a “7th Sea” campaign for the three of us and two others that’s heading into YEAR FIVE) so we knew each other pretty well. The GM and one of the players knew “Who” like the back of their hand, I was familiar with the basics of the show, and the other knew nothing beyond his knowledge of general science-fiction shows. So we each got to play a Time Lord in our own unique way, but not to the point where the other people got bored because THEY wanted to play the Doctor. My Doctor (The Barrister) was very lawyer like, dressed like a young Thomas Jefferson (yes, he was ginger), always trying to trap people within their own logic. The companions were a young Victorian street urchin and a 25th century astronaut rescued from cryogenic suspension. The huge fan’s Doctor (The Professor) had the charm and fashion sense of Three with the curiosity of Five and the boldness of Six. The scene in Davros where Six is trying to figure out what is being off-loaded from a spaceship while hiding behind crates, only to come bursting out when Davros shows up, sums him up pretty nicely. The companions were a bureaucrat (me) rescued from a life of boredom and a British big game hunter. The casual fan’s Doctor (The Mechanic) was the tinkerer and the inventor, always messing with his TARDIS and solving problems through science. I played the trying-to-reform space pirate (much like Leela but with more clothing) and the big fan played a survivor of Earth’s Dalek invasion. Like I said, it was a lot of fun, especially since the GM always opened and ended each session with the music. The last time we got to play was months after the divorce when everything had settled down, and it was a “The Three Doctors” style adventure where we each played our Time Lord and one of our companions. The casual fan didn’t understand why the rest of us looked scared when the GM opened up with the theme from The Ambassadors of Death. As for the GM, he had every DVD available at that time (he has every episode/reconstruction except for the two new releases) and a lot of the books and comics, but it wasn’t until two years ago that I managed to get him hooked on Big Finish. His interpetation of the universe contained a LOT of "expanded universe" stuff, including a few adventures based off of episodes never filmed/ordered. The one adventure I missed out on was the one adventure he did borrow from Big Finish - Cuddlesome, which ended with the Professor and the big game hunter trapped on a red phone booth surrounded by hordes and hordes of cute, cuddly, cannibalistic Troll dolls. CobiWann fucked around with this message at 15:14 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 15:11
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And then there's "Never Tell Me The Rules" which I can't ever stay mad at.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhdWNevpg-k Pretty much because it's as bombastic as the scene requires.
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Dec 5, 2014 16:46
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TinTower posted:And then there's "Never Tell Me The Rules" which I can't ever stay mad at. I love that. Here's a related video that Youtube sent me to, a Lego version of Smith's regeneration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FWP23X7JE4
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Dec 5, 2014 17:27
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McGann posted:I love that. That's really disturbing, I didn't remember how that scene went so the first bit looked like it was the Doctor's dismembered corpse scattering the floor
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Dec 5, 2014 17:39
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Cleretic posted:Maybe the most fitting would be for the Cybermen to be fairly easy to stop, but tenacious. Yes, you can shoot one and he'll keel over, but he won't be down for long. Hell, maybe even being down doesn't stop him, he'll just pull himself along the ground on the exact same goddamn warpath. The most important thing is a good dummy throw when they are finally finished off.  
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Dec 5, 2014 18:17
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I hadn't noticed that the Cybercontroller's head just explodes (although not in the story as he's alive again moments later)
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Dec 5, 2014 18:25
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Cleretic posted:I find it hard to decide how strong a Cyberman 'should' be, honestly. I'm not sure why that is, but while most other enemies of the Doctor are pretty self-evident and consistent, it just feels a tiny bit weird for the Cybermen to be at ANY level of direct power. All one needs to say about the revival Cybermen is that the Toclafane do the same idea much better, despite being trapped in one of the worst stories of the revival and having a recycled last-resort Dalek substitute. It's like being poo poo is baked into their bones at this point.
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Dec 5, 2014 20:04
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MrL_JaKiri posted:That's really disturbing, I didn't remember how that scene went so the first bit looked like it was the Doctor's dismembered corpse scattering the floor Re-watching it with this in mind, it changes the scene to seem like a prank by the Doctor, leaping out and surprising her after she finds his dismembered corpse scattered about the TARDIS. I do like the regeneration bit at the end and how he modified it to fit the 'no talking' rule. In more exciting YouTube news, I kind of want to change my name to 'Hot-Lips Hartnell' now 
McGann fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 21:30
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McGann posted:Re-watching it with this in mind, it changes the scene to seem like a prank by the Doctor, leaping out and surprising her after she finds his dismembered corpse scattered about the TARDIS. Oh that crazy doctor!
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Dec 5, 2014 21:33
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Weirdly, for a life long fan and amazing actor Capaldi feels like he's taking the longest to find his feet. He still doesn't really feel like a fully realized Doctor to me, though he does on occasion have moments where he does.
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Dec 5, 2014 21:38
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PriorMarcus posted:Weirdly, for a life long fan and amazing actor Capaldi feels like he's taking the longest to find his feet. He still doesn't really feel like a fully realized Doctor to me, though he does on occasion have moments where he does. I haven't felt that way at all about him. I think the writing had him trying to figure himself out for awhile and not always well in the first half of the season, but his actual portrayal has been pretty clear to be.
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Dec 5, 2014 21:39
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The problem is not with Capaldi, it's with the series. It feels particularly soulless at the moment.
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Dec 5, 2014 21:59
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I don't know, I felt like that moment where he sets up that lady on the Orient Express to become the Mummy's latest victim, then steals her grief to put himself in her place felt like the moment where he truly established himself as the Doctor, both in the eyes of Clara and the audience. I really got a sense that the confusion over how he was acting/treating people was a very deliberate move, that we (along with first Clara and later Danny) were supposed to question the integrity/morality of this new Doctor. The notion of questioning whether he was a good man or not is pretty explicitly laid out, both by the Doctor himself and his companions - even after the Orient Express episode he's shown just enough to get Clara back onboard with the adventuring, but then in Flatline when he has that triumphant moment as he banishes the Boneless, it's followed by him pointing out to Clara the "bad" influence he has been on her. It was a season long theme and for the Doctor at least I think the question has finally been answered after his confrontation with the Master (neither truly good nor bad, but bumbling along the best he can trying his best and relying on the grounding influence of his companions), but I expect Last Christmas will put to bed any last lingering doubts the audience might have, as well as providing a happy ending for Clara and Danny.
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Dec 5, 2014 22:42
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Cleretic posted:Maybe the most fitting would be for the Cybermen to be fairly easy to stop, but tenacious. Yes, you can shoot one and he'll keel over, but he won't be down for long. Hell, maybe even being down doesn't stop him, he'll just pull himself along the ground on the exact same goddamn warpath. I'm rewatching series 5 and this kind of happens in The Pandorica Opens with the Cyberhead trying to chomp Amy's face.
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Dec 5, 2014 23:01
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Star Platinum posted:I'm rewatching series 5 and this kind of happens in The Pandorica Opens with the Cyberhead trying to chomp Amy's face. I had such high hopes for any future Cybermen story based on that one brief scene. Such.... high hopes 
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Dec 5, 2014 23:05
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Bicyclops posted:I haven't felt that way at all about him. I think the writing had him trying to figure himself out for awhile and not always well in the first half of the season, but his actual portrayal has been pretty clear to be. Yeah, this. There was that whole "Oh yes, I'm a madman in a box, that's what I've always wanted to be!" thing in the finale just to drive it home that the doctor had been trying to find himself. Capaldi's been great and known exactly what he's doing. I really felt like this season didn't know what it was doing, though. It was way fragmented and unconnected, while still trying to do this whole season-long "30 seconds at the end of every episode" arc. It also felt like it was trying to tell a bunch of totally different stories all at the same time, and couldn't stay within a single mood with more than 2 characters on the screen for longer than 30 seconds. I think that's one of the things that bothered me most, is that while there were a couple episodes I enjoyed, every episode I was wondering what was going on, and never felt like I got a satisfying answer. For example, are they really going to follow up on Future spaceman TOTALLY NOT DANNY PINK and his toy soldier that clara gave to the doctor, or was that just some weird episode-consuming tangent? And I felt like they kept doing things like that. It'd be cool if it went somewhere, but it's probably not going anywhere, and now you don't have enough time for the actual story in this episode. (I am mad about this season wasting time with Capaldi, and denying us more of Michelle Gomez and him on screen together) surc fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 23:15
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Jerusalem posted:I had such high hopes for any future Cybermen story based on that one brief scene. I hated that scene. It's exactly what the Cybermen shouldn't be. A zombie inside a robot. The shell shouldn't have any autonomy without the body inside still being alive and ticking, because otherwise it's just a robot powered by blood.
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Dec 6, 2014 00:00
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PriorMarcus posted:I hated that scene. It's exactly what the Cybermen shouldn't be. A zombie inside a robot. The shell shouldn't have any autonomy without the body inside still being alive and ticking, because otherwise it's just a robot powered by blood. I don't mind the idea as long as the robot shell is dumber, clumsier and automated. Problem is, that would require more from proper Cybermen.
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Dec 6, 2014 00:55
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PriorMarcus posted:I hated that scene. It's exactly what the Cybermen shouldn't be. A zombie inside a robot. The shell shouldn't have any autonomy without the body inside still being alive and ticking, because otherwise it's just a robot powered by blood. the problem is that it's hard to figure out what they should be. They're a perfectly solid concept, but no way for them to act really 'works' for them. They're destined to be inconsistent, because nobody's yet figured out a way for them to act as villains that isn't either 'Robot Zombies' or 'Silver Borg', neither of which is a great direction for them anyway.
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Dec 6, 2014 01:01
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Cleretic posted:the problem is that it's hard to figure out what they should be. They're a perfectly solid concept, but no way for them to act really 'works' for them. They're destined to be inconsistent, because nobody's yet figured out a way for them to act as villains that isn't either 'Robot Zombies' or 'Silver Borg', neither of which is a great direction for them anyway. When will we get a writer who realizes their every motivation should involve their own survival, and not just lovely Dalek/Borg hybrids? A cyberman should be able to be logically convinced to do something in the protagonist's interest, if they can show how it will also benefit the cybermen the most of the available options. At least, that's how I've viewed them. Desperate survivors - if I had to sum their modus operandi up (or what I think it should be): "The ends [survival of the species] justify the means" edit: I think a great Cyberman story is Human Resources (spoilered because I'm not sure if their inclusion in the story is well known, it's the basis for the first cliffhanger so it's at least SUPPOSED to be a surprise). Though mostly because The Doctor initially, accidentally, assists them when he tries to stop the 'bad guys' - who turn out to be fighting a war with the Cybermen which sets up an interesting premise of what might happen if The Doctor and the Cybermen meet in a situation where idealism and logic place them on the same side. I want that story. edit: I want that story but without the obvious "cybermen plan to betray the doctor / the doctor plans to betray the cybermen" angle. McGann fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Dec 6, 2014 |
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Dec 6, 2014 01:11
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McGann posted:When will we get a writer who realizes their every motivation should involve their own survival, and not just lovely Dalek/Borg hybrids? A cyberman should be able to be logically convinced to do something in the protagonist's interest, if they can show how it will also benefit the cybermen the most of the available options. well, Closing Time tried to do that. And I remain convinced that Dark Water/Death in Heaven had pretty good Cybermen, and that if it weren't a perfectly good Master story it would've been a great Cyberman revamp. But I don't really mean what they think, I more mean how they perform. How they approach, how they fight, how they die. An ideal way for the Cybermen to behave in regards to the plot exists, although whether or not it's adhered to is another question. What we don't have is, when it comes to the Cybermen powering up their weapons and heading into battle (which, like it or not, is inevitable), there's no real direction or style that works for them.
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Dec 6, 2014 01:19
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Cleretic posted:
I always forget about Closing Time. But I misunderstood - and I agree 100% with you. I sat for a minute thinking, "how would I act if I were playing a Cyberman?" and couldn't come up with a 'style' I felt 100% about. I mean, they're still alive humans...should they be agile? But they're carrying tons of metal, does that slow them down? Is mobility (joint-wise) an issue due to the construction of their "bodies"...do they still 'see' people like a human, or is it more of a machine where it is constantly scanning for new information? I don't really mind the "modern" style for a complete robot, but a cyborg? I kind of lean towards the early Tenth Planet / Tomb style of them performing like clearly modified humans. Probably speed them up a bit though. That's probably the only bit I liked about Nightmare in Silver - the clearly physiologically enhanced Cybermen. Mainly just the fact that they could go into super speed (disregarding the obvious question of 'why don't they do that all the time?') because it was in line with the whole "upgrade" aspect. Normally, we just get slightly more durable but incredibly slow and un-agile robots instead of something clearly meant to improve upon the original.
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Dec 6, 2014 01:27
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Well here's the thing, if you get the Cyberman mentality right then anything that improves survival, no matter how slow or clunky it might make you, as long as it keeps you alive better, should be considered an upgrade.
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Dec 6, 2014 02:35
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